Question About Confusion/Charm Person

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Confusion will make enemies hostile towards everything and randomly attack anyone nearby.

Charm Person will stop a creature from attacking the caster, but that creature does not become an 'ally' of the caster. Charm Person is only broken when the caster or an ally of the caster harms the charmed creature.

So what's to stop me from Confusing everyone, then upcasting Charm Person to stop as many of them from attacking me as much as possible so they only attack each other?

This should also work with the level six Enchanter feature Instinctive Charm, since you are redirecting an attack from a non-ally from yourself to a charmed creature, it shouldn't break the charm.

Has anyone tried this? Will they all kill each other?

[jonnin]

in table top, what stops you is the DM. The DM has the final say when you try to bend the rules this far. Historically confusion had a die roll and you could stand there, run away, attack nearest thing, etc and the DM could fudge up funny stuff to do like drop your weapon or use inappropriate items (like how if you use the life sucking flail and go nuts, your character will throw a grenade or use a high level spell just to screw up your available tools and to do as much damage as possible). In fact, the flail's madness is exactly what confusion SHOULD do.

charm person feels nerfed to death in this game. It used to give you an ally, who would give up info and even help you fight, but it had limits. A charmed ally would not do something it would not normally do, eg set itself on fire at your request, or betray its OTHER friends (it hasn't forgotten who its real friends are, it just added you in the mix). In BG3 and I guess 5e it seems like CP is not better than friends usually, as both give full advantage when talking, so its only use is not attacking you, which I have not tried to exploit.

But that is D&D table top. BG3 may not have coded it well, so all I can say is give it a try. NOTHING stops you other than the DM which is whether the game applied common sense anti-exploit here or not. If not, it may do what you want...

If I were dm and you did this, I would give preference to confusion, as a higher level spell, and simply tell you that someone under the confused state will attack an ally because confused, regardless of charmed. Its not a barrier that blocks attacking the caster, its a mental state that it thinks you are a friend... but when confused, the target is unable to differentiate friend vs foe vs tree vs sheep.

[Mike Garrison]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Cassandra:

So what's to stop me from Confusing everyone, then upcasting Charm Person to stop as many of them from attacking me as much as possible so they only attack each other?

Charm person is a waste of a level 1 spell slot. Upcasting it? Even worse. Doing it on enemies that are already massively debuffed? Even more wasteful.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

Originally posted by Pan Darius Cassandra:

So what's to stop me from Confusing everyone, then upcasting Charm Person to stop as many of them from attacking me as much as possible so they only attack each other?

Charm person is a waste of a level 1 spell slot. Upcasting it? Even worse. Doing it on enemies that are already massively debuffed? Even more wasteful.

You're not actually addressing the question.

Confusion: causes enemies to become hostile towards each other, attack at random.

Charm Petson: causes a creature to not attack you, but it's not actually flagged as an 'ally'.

This should result in your opponents attacking only each other, since Charm Person is only broken when you or an ally harms the charmed creature.

Since none of the confused creatures are your ally, they will not break the charm, and since they are charmed, they will not attack you.

This is how you get them to kill each other.

[Detective Costeau]

It seems like it should work that way. You can always try it and see what happens.
It does seem of purely academic interest, though. It really would involve spending a giant pile of spell slots on something you can do much more easily in other ways.
Still, nothing wrong with screwing with things just to see if you can, right?

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by Detective Costeau:

It seems like it should work that way. You can always try it and see what happens.
It does seem of purely academic interest, though. It really would involve spending a giant pile of spell slots on something you can do much more easily in other ways.
Still, nothing wrong with screwing with things just to see if you can, right?

2 spell slots is a "giant pile"? 🤔

[GriffinPilgrim]

It depends on which spell overpowers the other. My guess is Confusion wins; Characters who are allies but not under your control are controlled by the AI like enemies but are flagged to not attack your party members but will do so under Confusion. If it overrides that flag it probably overrides Charm person.
Which, as a side note, is the call I'd make as DM, since the whole point is you don't know who is who or what you should be doing so how you feel about someone, magically enforced or otherwise, doesn't matter.
But hey, try it out, let us know how it goes.

[Detective Costeau]

I mean, if you've got two opponents, you're talking about using a level 4 and level 2 spell to hopefully make them hurt each other sometimes. You could just use a single level 3 hold person to totally incapacitate both. So yeah, I think it's a bad use of spell slots, at least on paper.
I'm not stopping you doing it if you think it's a good idea, go ahead and try it and let us know what happens if you want. If it turns out I'm wrong and confuse-charming people is actually a super-effective tactic, I'll happily admit to being wrong.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by Detective Costeau:

I mean, if you've got two opponents, you're talking about using a level 4 and level 2 spell to hopefully make them hurt each other sometimes. You could just use a single level 3 hold person to totally incapacitate both. So yeah, I think it's a bad use of spell slots, at least on paper.
I'm not stopping you doing it if you think it's a good idea, go ahead and try it and let us know what happens if you want. If it turns out I'm wrong and confuse-charming people is actually a super-effective tactic, I'll happily admit to being wrong.

It's more about doing it for the lulz of watching them kill each other, and also the satisfaction of finally making Charm Person useful.

[jonnin]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Cassandra:

Originally posted by Detective Costeau:

It seems like it should work that way. You can always try it and see what happens.
It does seem of purely academic interest, though. It really would involve spending a giant pile of spell slots on something you can do much more easily in other ways.
Still, nothing wrong with screwing with things just to see if you can, right?

2 spell slots is a "giant pile"? 🤔

presumably it would be at least 3. 2 enemy, 2 charms, one confusion. Possibly multiple more charms for a larger, more interesting group: when do you ever get just 2? I mean for the whole popcorn experience of confuse several and make them all fight around you while you watch.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by jonnin:

Originally posted by Pan Darius Cassandra:

2 spell slots is a "giant pile"? 🤔

presumably it would be at least 3. 2 enemy, 2 charms, one confusion. Possibly multiple more charms for a larger, more interesting group: when do you ever get just 2? I mean for the whole popcorn experience of confuse several and make them all fight around you while you watch.

Charm Person can be upcast for more targets, so it's just two slots, although the most you can possibly charm with Charm Person is 6 enemies with a lvl 6 spell slut.

[alanc9]

Now I'm thinking someone ought to test this, just to see how the AI targeting works.

[Emilia Tempest]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Cassandra:

Confusion will make enemies hostile towards everything and randomly attack anyone nearby.

Charm Person will stop a creature from attacking the caster, but that creature does not become an 'ally' of the caster. Charm Person is only broken when the caster or an ally of the caster harms the charmed creature.

So what's to stop me from Confusing everyone, then upcasting Charm Person to stop as many of them from attacking me as much as possible so they only attack each other?

This should also work with the level six Enchanter feature Instinctive Charm, since you are redirecting an attack from a non-ally from yourself to a charmed creature, it shouldn't break the charm.

Has anyone tried this? Will they all kill each other?

Confusion will make them either attack whoever is closest (or just skip their turn, feels like a 50/50)
If you then also charm the people that are confused, they will NOT attack the one who cast "Charm"
They will however still attack your allies (aka anyone in your party that was not the one casting "Charm")
Instinctive Charm works the same as if you used "Charm Person", if you charm a person that way the new caster is the one who used "Charm" and will not be attacked (aka you cannot make everyone charm the same person, only one person cant be attacked)

And trying to use Instinctive Charm to redirect an attack from a non-charmed to a charmed enemy will simply cancel the first attack but not the second (if they are dual wielding) and then charm them, but not redirect the attack
If it was already charmed the game gets confused and the attacker SOMETIMES misses his attack and nothing else happens
So you were correct, it doesnt break charm it breaks the game

But yes, if they are both confused + charmed and have no other viable target (your allies) they will fight each other


So if you want your plan to work, you need to have only one person of your party to do this
You can also do this with a Sanctuary instead of charm, though you can still use charm on top of that to make temporary allies (just have that cleric carry a potion of invisibility so they can run away out the fight safely after they did their sanctuary cast)
I would recommend to use a sorcerer as they can convert their level 1 to 3 and 5 and 6 spell slots into sorcery points which can then be converted to level 4 spell slots to get the most per-day confusion casts (your cleric wont need anything fancy as sanctuary will last for 10 turns, do be careful with sanctuary as you are blocked from it the turn after you leave it!)

If you wanna cheap out on the invis potions, you can have a 3rd member be a sorcerer and drop invisibility on your cleric and or other sorcerer if they need it (for example, after applying sanctuary or when your sorcerer cant have sanctuary yet)

And yes casting confusion does not break sanctuary, somehow, I guess youre not the one doing the damage I suppose

[Jonny Boy]

Confusion is bugged at the moment still as of patch 7.

Currently enemies get 2 saves before the start of their turn. It is supposed to be 1 save.

Also when it actually does hit the enemies are not getting afflicted with confusion as per PHB rules. No where near it.

Waste of spell slot dont use it.